Sunny

DAY 12 : 26th AUGUST:Sonamarg-Kargil



Account by Krishnendu Kes

Starting from Sonamarg the landscape begun to change. We were gradually leaving the greenery of the Kashmir Valley behind. Very soon we came on to narrow single lane rocky paths with no asphalt, pieces of rock and splinter met our vehicle tires. And soon we were on the site of the landslide where the TV crew took some bytes and we continued on our way. The going got tougher by the minute. And my vehicle started giving problems in the fuel flow. She was choking in the carbs. I was dragging way behind. And soon I sputtered to a total halt. Sunny went ahead and sent back the Kinetic engineer. He got her going. But it still did not feel right. I told him to clean the slide as well as the needle in the carb. He said he would do it once we got to some place more sane. I said that it is going to get less and less sane!

My bike started and stayed that way. I began to roll again. Caught up with the rest of the gang some kilometers away. We continued to ride. It is not a very healthy ride for large four wheelers. We happened to cross an accident site where a truck had veered off the edge about an hour ago and we could make out some remnants of the disaster at the bottom of the half-a-kilometer drop. Apparently giant cranes were on their way to salvage whatever they could.

As we just saw, the drops were pretty steep. And I am terrified of heights. And I love hill riding, mountain riding, with the curves, the twists and turns, and of course the heights and drops. I rode on. With the pleasure of riding in such locales.

The landscape was terrific. The roads were terrible. Non existent. We continued our way till Zojila pass. There was an army truck standing near Zojila mountain. They told us strange stories of the mountain having strong magnetic properties. That vehicles start rolling on their own in unprecedented ways. Helicopters cannot flyover the mountain. Everybody listened in awe. I was as usual skeptical. But did not obviously voice it.


After a point of time we were stopped by army personnel to make a small detour, make checks and entries in a long log book inside a soggy tent manned by two weary looking army guys, with a stove on warming tea, selling packaged peanuts at peanut prices. We got into the tent and made our entries with the vehicle numbers, driving license numbers, names and other useless data. I sat down next to the stove warming myself emptying a packet of peanuts into my ever-hungry mouth.

Once the entries made, we started making our way towards Kargil. The pace at which we were moving, it looked like it would take forever. We had done 26 kilometers in more than 2 hours! And here we were thinking of doing all the way till Leh the previous day. We still had 75 arduous kilometers to go and it was already 1300hours.

Soon enough, I really don’t know if we can call that, since in such riding conditions and in such extreme landscapes, one tends to forget the notion of soon and late. So, some time later, we came across the famed Drass. This is the place where one fine day, as the legend goes, in the month of March, some roaming Gujjars, the local shepherds, came and told the Indian army personnel that the LOC had been breached and that some positions no more belonged to the Indian Army as they had been taken over by the army. This led to the famous 100days Kargil war over Tiger Hill. Drass is also the place where the enemy army could monitor the highway and could fire and shell at will at the passing convoys. For this very reason, now a strong, thick and high wall has been built to protect unsuspecting passers-by from enemy fire.


We talked to the Army guys over there. They showed us the location of Tiger hill. We checked out their bunker. Gasoline posed near it. Apparently there has been no firing or shelling since the short war of ’99. We heaved a sigh of relief, thanked the smiling soldiers, distributed GIR fliers and continued on our way.
In the midst of this almost barren landscape, we crossed some ripe golden paddy fields ready for harvest and the second coldest inhabited village in the world with a recorded temperature of –60°C on 9th January 1995. Merely looking at that board gave me the shivers. I quickly opened throttle and moved ahead. To warmer climes. Though I was not too cold there. Ambient outdoor temperature would have been in the mid twenties in the shade.


We reached Kargil at nearly 1900 hours. Checked out a couple of hotels, bargained, finally checked in and I started updating. I waited in my hotel room with Gaso for Sunny and Sky to come back to go for dinner. Skyscraper came back in a while to say that Sunny was in a net café trying to update and wanted me around. In the meanwhile Gaso had got me a few pieces of delicious kebabs from some streetside vendor. Had not eaten anything through the day. It tasted like heaven.
I went to the café, updated and picked up some food on the way back. Had not eaten anything decent to write home about since we left Srinagar. We bought momos worth one rupee! They were horrible. I also bought some meat stuffed in what looked like sausages. I could not even finish half of what I had bought. Finally joined Sky and Sunny at dinner at the hotel restaurant and had to be satisfied with Dal and Rice. Next day was going to be a great day, the road to Leh.



DAY 12 : 26th AUGUST:Sonamarg-Kargil account by Sundeep Gajjar ( Sunny )

We had a really nice time in the secluded J&K Tourism Tourist Bungalow which was away from the main Sonamarg village which itself was very small. We started from the Tourist Bungalow after Ken made us some nice brea and jam. So we saved time which would have been consumed for breakfast in the main village. Sumit, the Zee news correspondent who had been travelling with us with a cameraman, went down to the village and confirmed that the road ahead was cleared of the landslide and opened. So we left at 10 AM for Kargil, a village which no one knew before 1999 when the war broke out between India and Pakistan. We had great expectations from the terrain and the travel to Kargil in general. And we were not dissapointed.

Almost as soon as we got out of Sonamarg’s boundaries we were greeted by mildly inhospitable terrain. The Blazes were performing inexplicably well except a minor irritant in Ken’s Blaze.

They were pulling surprisngly well. Kinetic’s Service engineer, Mr. Vinayak identified the problem to be with the carburettor needle. Except stalling sometimes it was performing well above the acceptable limits. The scenery changed from lush green meadows to barren landscape with jagged rocks carved in alien shapes with the wind carrying dust and the water flowing down from melting glaciers. We had the destiny to see one of the greatest wonders on earth quite up close. A huge grey and white glacier extending all the way to a further away high mountain peak. The glacier was melting and giving birth to a stream which had gathered quite a lot of momentum and volume and flew through the barren landscape down to the main river. It cannot be described in words, but it truly was a wonder to behold. Next up we halted at a place where some localites were curiously looking down a very deep gorge marrying into a glacier for the mountain opposite to us. It so happened that today at 9 AM a truck carrying wooden load was giving way to an Army convoy heading from Kargil to Sonamarg. It must have moved to the very edge of the road when the mass below gave away and the truck fell into the deep gorge taking the two men and the woonden load with it to the ice at the bottom. A chill went through our spine.Imagine the death of those two, even if somehow they would have survived the fall they couldnt have managed to get up and would have died in the sub zero temperature on the ice. Localites told us police didnt even go down to see because it was so steep and deep, whicle some localites did and reported back thata man’s head was into the ice and his legs were sticking out. But no one could do anything as that part of the glacier was verysoft on the surface with cold water below it.

Such was what fate decided to deliver that day to those two men. We kept moving on thinking what would happen to us.We reached Drass, the second most coldest inhabited place on earth with a minimum temperature recorded at -60 degrees on Jan 6th 1995. At the checkpost dark rain clouds got trapped between the mountain peaks that surrounded the Drass valley and poured. The wind chill factor must be below 10 degrees then. We shivered had tea, biscuits and waited and then continued after rain subsided. After a little bit ahead from Drass, before we crossed an army bridge we saw 600 or so metres long concrete wall. Armymen educated us that it was to shield the road from shelling from the Pakistani checkpost on Tiger Hill. But this was in 1999. After that the shelling had stopped. If shelling happens today then it will mean WAR. Kargil was around 80 kms away from Drass. It was a fantastic ride with not much of bad roads before we arrived in Kargil. It amazed be how developed Kargil was. I saw a Karizma here along with cool dudes on Enticers too. I am typing this in from an Internet Cafe in Kargil. The net here was surprisingly fast, not that I was complaining. The swine here was trying to swindle us into paying 120 rupees an hour which we got down to 60 rupees. But he muct never have realised for us internet was priceless. I have a feeling that this part of the our tour( Delhi->Leh ) is very well connected with internet than the next part ( Leh->Spiti->Kaza ). I also got myself a nice pair of high boots for 1250bucks. Tommrow we leave for Leh.

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moeed

Lovely pics. I simply love the landscape.

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Kriss bhai will always live in our hearts